


Derivation

by Polyworth (Jellibeebee)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, I draw the damn line at aliens and uchiha madara being dead-not-dead-dead oops it's obito!, This isn't a spoiler but the sage of six paths is the one who dies at the end, a fix-it fic that has to go all the way back to the beginning, because that's the extent of my anger with canon lmao, reparation au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9359768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellibeebee/pseuds/Polyworth
Summary: 'With this technique, you can light fires without a tinderbox. And with this, you could bring water from your well without a bucket. With this, you could carry stone for cutting. With this,' Arashi says, unwittingly planting seeds of weapons in the minds of others. 'With this, you could blow out lanterns from a great distance.'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A millennia ago, a man named Arashi founded an entire group of people on accident.This is the story of how Shinobi were born.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So... This happened. Basically, the way Naruto ended made me and my s/o so angry we had to make a whole au where we nitpicked canon until it resembled something we wanted to deal with. (Yes, I know the sage has an actual name, I just don't like it because reasons.)
> 
> You can find more information about the au at Reparationau.tumblr.com
> 
> Enjoy!

A millennia ago, a man named Arashi founded an entire group of people on accident. His name was at odds with his temperament, a person named for a maelstrom who spent almost all his time within doors, reading dusty scrolls and writing. He was always writing, always thinking, always lost in his own inner world. And perhaps the only connection he had to his given name was the passion with which he studied and wrote, for no one in his time did either with such fervor.

Arashi was a man who saw the unknown in the world and sought to conquer it--not with swords and fire, which in so far had been the accepted way, but by learning all of its nature. When Arashi was a young man, capricious creatures called youkai roamed the world, aiding humans as often as they simply ate them. Youkai were considered fickle gods, unimaginably powerful to their humans subjects, and therefore free to do as they would.

People were afraid, and perhaps Arashi was as well, but greater than his fear was his desire to understand how it was youkai existed. Humans, with flesh and bone and blood, died when injured, stopped living when, say, beheaded. But youkai... Youkai were solid, yet ephemeral, and their heads often spoke after being parted from their bodies. And, Oh, the amazing things they could do. Change shape, level mountains, cast illusions, drown a village in a drought! This is what entranced the man Arashi, what set him to fervent study.

This is the story of how Shinobi were born.

* * *

The man Arashi was thirty when it happened. He had set himself to meditation and had not broken his concentration for six days and six nights. His wife and daughters worried, but he was a stubborn man, and they knew there was little and less they could say to entice him out of a decision he had already made.

So there sat Arashi, cross legged with his palms up, open and waiting. Waiting for the moment he would finally receive _some_ kind of sign, some epiphany or revelation as to the true nature of his study. He had studied youkai, their forms and power, and come to the conclusion that they were not the source of their own power. That which gave them strength was a natural energy that lived in all things, and Arashi had deduced it was only that youkai had much greater amounts of it and it was this that gave them the advantage.

Chakra, he called it. The energy manifested within the soul of everything. Meditating had helped him feel in tune with his own in the past. He thinks, at least-- he can only think, and never prove, no matter how many experiments he attempts and how many notes he takes. He had hoped that doing so for an extended period would enlighten him further...

But it has been six days, and six nights, and he is no closer to uncovering the secrets of the universe like this. Arashi sighs and is about to shift, to move and drink the fresh water that his eldest daughter Touri had set by his side earlier in the day, but something... Something _happens_.

The world twists, warps, there is a smell like ozone, heat and light and fire and unbearable _sound_ , worse than thunder, more terrible than the roar of any beast. His mind is rubbed raw, nerves laid bare and sensitive, he is nothing, a grain of sand on a miles wide beach, infinitesimal--

Arashi opens his eyes.

He is in a field, and there is a white fox sitting before him, its head tilted. Its eyes are golden and knowing, but Arashi does not fear them. He relaxes, realizing his whole body had been tensed as if braced for impact, and the fox tilts its head the other way.

'Well, now.' It says with a man's voice. 'A guest. How... Unexpected.'

Arashi opens his mouth, shuts his mouth, rubs his eyes. When he cracks his eyes back open, the white fox is still there, and now he can see it has more than a single tail behind it.

The fox, in fact, has four tails.

'A youkai!' He blurts out, caught between awe and triumph. The fox snorts.

'An observant human.'

Arashi is a thirty year old man, a father and husband and accomplished scholar, and so he certainly does not blush from a sentient fox's dry sarcasm.

'You called me a guest-- but where exactly am I a guest _of_?' He turns his head to take in the field, but all he can surmise is that it is a normal field, with normal flowers and normal grass and normal trees at the edge of it. There are mountains on the horizon, but they are not any mountain range he knows.

'The ancestral home of youkai. But the question I am more interested in is _how in the four realms you got here_.' The fox's voice is even, but there is a flavor of frustration to it, as if this being is not used to being out of the know in everything. Arashi looks to it and smooths his hair back from his face out of nervous habit.

'I'm not actually really sure myself? But this--it's revolutionary! I had theorized that youkai must come from somewhere specific, a center of power perhaps, but I hadn't thought you would have an ancestral home--that implies culture! Society! I've only had limited contact with youkai who were willing to talk to me about themselves, and now I'm in their home. I need my--' Arashi pats at his hip, where he would normally keep his scrap paper and charcoal pencil, and finds the pouch that ought to be there is gone.

Had he taken it off before beginning to meditate? He can't recall, but surely he would have kept it on his person. Rarely does he ever take the thing off to the point that his wife, Sayumi, had teased it was his real partner.

Arashi hears rustling, snaps his head up and locks eyes with the fox, who has the pouch in its mouth.

They stare at each other for a long moment, neither moving nor breathing. Distantly, Arashi realizes there are no birds singing in the trees.

The fox makes a break for the trees, a streak of white in the shin high grass, but Arashi is hot on its heels. Those notes are not his complete work by any means, but they are also _his notes_ , _his work_ , and they mean the world to him. He will follow this damned fox to the ends of the earth for those bits and pieces of paper, his half thought out realizations and musings, because there is a chance that within those ramblings lies the answers to his questions.

He doesn't stop to wonder when the fox could have taken the pouch from his hip. He doesn't stop when branches and brambles whip and scrape at his face and body. He doesn't stop when his lungs and legs burn with exertion and exhaustion. The forest seems never ending, and the fox's stamina even more so.

Arashi stops only when he catches the fox slipping into an old house, trying to catch his ragged breath, head swimming, because his mind has latched onto an immediate and distressing question that makes his blood run cold. An uncomfortable fear seizes his heart and numbs his tired limbs.

If this is the home of youkai, who could have built this?

* * *

Arashi learns, after he'd worked up the courage and curiosity necessary to enter the house the fox had hidden itself in, that the fox is named Kurama and he's kind of an asshole.

He also learns that, in youkai terms, Kurama is a young adult who still lives with his family.

Arashi learns these things with a cup of tea in his hands, sitting across from an impossibly beautiful person with long snow white hair and bright golden eyes. Their name is Chiharu, and they apologize for their younger cousin's antics wholeheartedly, declaring Kurama has always been this way, always using his clever mind for rotten and ultimately silly things.

There is a light sound of nails against tatami, and the pair of fox ears atop Chiharu's head twitch in recognition of it.

Arashi's eye twitches similarly.

Youkai can change shapes, he knows, but he has never seen them look nor act so nearly human.

Chiharu doesn't turn, but their eyes narrow dangerously at the teapot that sits on a low table between them. 'Kura-chan, you come in here this instant and return Arashi-san's belongings to him.' Arashi swallows a protest, because of course he wants his notes back, but he also doesn't really want to be witness and party to an internal and apparently ongoing family conflict.

Kurama comes into the room not as a fox but as a young man dressed in a white, sleeveless yukata, his features sharper than his elder cousin, hair more silver than white. He has a sour look on his otherwise beautiful face, mouth pinched with annoyance and eyes burning.

He throws the pouch at Arashi's head. Arashi only catches it because it is aimed directly at his face and is not very heavy.

'There,' Kurama says, chin tilted haughtily. 'There wasn't anything interesting in it anyway.'

'Kurama!' Chiharu scolds, nose wrinkling. He sounds more disappointed than annoyed, which as a parent Arashi can sympathize with. The elder fox looks to him, embarrassed and flustered. 'Arashi-san, I am so sorry. If there is any way I can make up for this _blatant disrespect to our only guest_ \--'

Kurama snorts and Chiharu fixes him with a glare that could melt a mountain. The younger fox's ears flatten, and he seats himself off to the side, not looking at either of them.

'Actually, Chiharu-san,' Arashi clears his throat, sets down his tea, and takes out his paper and pencil.

'Could you perhaps answer some questions I have, in that case?'

* * *

Arashi's eyes open to the walls of his own home hours later, just as the first rays of dawn have begun to slip in through the window opposite him. There is a brief moment when his mind is blank, where he can't recall what he was doing or thinking a moment ago, but it passes and leaves him in a whirlwind of thoughts and urges.

Youki, the foxes had called their chakra _youki_ , and human chakra _reiki_ , and he was _right_ because chakra is _real_ , and he hadn't guessed that youkai were beings made _entirely out of chakra_ but how could he have thought of such a thing? He needs to get up, to check and see if his notes translated to this world--to the _physical plane_ because he had managed to astrally project himself into the _spiritual plane_ where _youkai live_ \--

Arashi shifts, and his whole body screams out in physical agony.

Right--he had sat still for six days and nights with neither food nor water. First, he needs to straighten out his legs, then drink some water, and _then_ he can check his notes and _write_ because this opens up _so many possibilities_....

Maybe he could have Sayumi read the notes aloud to him.

* * *

Arashi is thirty five, and through a combination of trial and error, innumerable hours of practice, and multitudes of trips back to the spiritual realm, he has found a way to manifest his chakra into this physical world.

It was a small thing at first--a heat in his hands, a tingling along his fingertips, a slight but pervasive new awareness of the subtle power constantly humming in the world around him--but it grew quickly. The more he called on his latent power, the greater the reserves of power seemed to grow. A pebble held in the palm of his hand could levitate, water in a bowl could rise, flames could lift from wicks with his coaxing, tiny gusts of air could move his notes around his desk.

Needless to say Arashi is absolutely delighted with these developments and has shared them not only with his wife and children, but with the nearby villagers. 'With this technique, you can light fires without a tinderbox. And with this, you could bring water from your well without a bucket. With this, you could carry stone for cutting. With this,' Arashi says, unwittingly planting seeds of weapons in the minds of others. 'With this, you could blow out lanterns from a great distance.'

Arashi shares his discoveries, his techniques, with anyone who asks it of him. This man who has devoted his life to uncovering the world's secrets is of course more than happy to finally be able to show the fruits of his labor, to pass his knowledge on to anyone who will listen. His more devout students come to him every morning after sunrise, and he teaches them until just after noon and sends them home to their families.

The easiest to teach are the children, whose chakra systems are easier to open, who are more eager and willing to make mistakes than most of their adult counterparts.

Arashi turns forty, and news reaches him which changes his life permanently.

Two villages over, at the base of the nearest mountain, a youkai was killed.

By several humans.

Arashi's students.

Using _chakra_.

* * *

Arashi, ultimately, finds that he is a coward.

Unable to bear the consequences of his actions, Arashi hides himself away at the top of a mountain with a weak excuse of contemplation. He says goodbye to Sayumi and their six daughters, goodbye to his students, goodbye to his library and reams and reams of notes and experiments, observations, revelations, extrapolations.

He is a terrible coward.

When the news of that first death reached him, Arashi immediately understood what his discovery would truly mean for this world. First, humanity would rise up against the youkai who threaten them, unrelenting as the oncoming tide until either all the youkai in this world became rubble or returned to their home in the spiritual realm. Next, those who became strong against the threat of youkai would turn their strength against other humans, subjugating the ones they sought to protect because they have suddenly found themselves unopposed and in the exact position to do so. Finally, the world would become one of death and war, children becoming horrifically powered soldiers to satisfy the demands of their parents, killing and killing until there is nothing left but ash and blood soaked earth.

Arashi understood all of this was to pass and understood that it was ultimately his own fault, and so he sequestered himself away so that he might never teach another soul what he had learned--what he continues to learn, because despite himself, he finds he can no more stop doing so than cease breathing.

Arashi learns and meditates and goes to the foxes he has come to know--he cries to Chiharu, that he has made a horrible mistake, a horribly irreparable mistake, and Kurama is the one who places a hand on his back and says 'You are not to blame for the greed of others'--but he no longer writes. He will not leave a trace of his findings for more of humanity to find in posterity and exploit for the purposes of murder and war.

Over the years, people seek him out. Arashi turns them all away, students and family alike. When they do not go peacefully he forces them, because he has discovered a way to draw chakra into patterns and breathe his will into it. These marks are potent if not painfully one note--PUSH, he can command one. PULL, another. BURN, a third--but they serve his purposes.

He is a coward, and he savors in the suffering his solitude provides him. This is both his punishment and the world's, for he will rob them of his knowledge just as they had robbed him of his innocent wonder of the world. He is grieving and guilty and does not know how to repair the damage he has caused to his world and the future before him.

Arashi becomes an old man in the mountains, although he has stopped counting the years of his age. He is tired and bitter and unbearably full of sorrow.

A child runs, full tilt, up from the base of his mountain to the top. She does not have to stop because she is using chakra to climb the sheer rock face. Her face is round and her hair is a brilliant shade of red, the color his own hair held years and years ago.

'Ojii-sama, my name is Umeha. Your third daughter is--was--my mother,' she says, dark eyes serious, expression the picture of a child's single minded determination. 'My mother is dead, and there is a monster in the world that says it's a god. She died, Ojii-sama, protecting me.' Umeha takes a deep breath, most likely to steel herself, to keep from crying, both.

'She said it would be a waste, to ask you for help, but we are all dying, and...'

Arashi knows he is an old fool, especially if this is the thing that finally draws him from his seclusion. A villain is a man who unleashes darkness upon the world, but a monster is a man who would abandon his family, he knows.

He draws himself up and sighs.

'I will go.'

* * *

 

There is, in fact, a youkai who claims they are a god. They are called the Jyuubi, the ten tails, and they have devoured others of their kind to reach a mind breakingly vast size and strength. It is a horrible thing to look upon, all thrashing limbs and pale, bloodless skin. It has a single grotesque red eye and a mouth that can swallow a thousand men whole.

Arashi looks upon the Jyuubi and understands that this, too, is his doing.

He reaches for his chakra and traps the beast under the weight of a mountain, drowns it in torrential rain, surrounds it in a sea of fire, tears at it with violent hurricanes, unleashes lightning from the heavens.

The Jyuubi flinches and shrieks its amusement at his petty attempts.

Arashi's eyes ache, as if some inner pressure is building behind them. He draws a seal with his own blood and stalls the massive creature for a moment, a day, time has ceased to matter. The sun comes and goes, and Arashi engages the beast his foolishness has created. His naivety and innocence twisted into arrogance and greed, into hate and anger.

What would be known later as a month into his fight, something within Arashi changes. Clicks. Takes root and blooms and suddenly he can _see_. There are layers to the world, and with a pull of his thoughts he can rearrange them.

He reaches for the first circle, pulls, and gravity comes rushing down onto his foe. The Jyuubi screams its rage, but it is pinned under the weight of the planet and for all its strength cannot resist this.

The second circle supplies him weapons the size of the Jyuubi's tails, and so he summons pins with which to hold the beast in place.

The third circle allows him to _pull_ at the Jyuubi's core, its center of being, its _chakra_. Arashi pulls it in ten different directions. The Jyuubi attempts to thrash under his grip. Arashi pulls harder.

The fourth circle tempts him, for he could call on his only companions in any world left, but Chiharu would be unsettled by this affair and Kurama might desert him after finding it distasteful.

The fifth circle gives him the strength to turn his pulling at the Jyuubi into taking, siphoning its chakra into ten fractions, ten bodies which are beginning to form.

The sixth circle opens a doorway.

When the door shuts, Arashi is dying, but the Jyuubi is destroyed. In the crater of its demise, there are nine much smaller youkai: a tanuki, a nekomata, a genbu, an inugami, a qirin, a baku, a phoenix, an ushi-oni, and... a kitsune. They crowd around him. Curious and new, they call him Father, they ask his name, they ask _their_ names.

There is a certain peace Arashi finds in his dying, and so he names the nine of them. He gives them purpose--to guard humanity from itself, to protect them, to keep them from growing too powerful or arrogant. For they are nature incarnate, beings of chakra and power, but they are also capable of mercy, of gentleness, of choice.

Arashi dies in this place, and the bijuu he has created scatter to the winds. A temple is erected in his honor, his teachings are passed down through the centuries.

Something within the stones slumbers on, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I haven't written fic and posted it in... several years. This was an Experience for me, so please, if you liked, or disliked, or had any thoughts at all about this fic, please comment and let me know!
> 
> (points to people if they can guess what anime the kitsune Chiharu and Kurama are from. HINT: they're both from different things... also Kurama's is pretty obvious. Good luck with Chiharu though.)
> 
> ((Double points to the people who know why I named the sage Arashi))
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Bee


End file.
